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Kevin's website rant #1 – Don't cause me pain!

And now for something different. In the past I've selected an Internet topic, researched all of its technical (dry?) facts, and then did my best to present it to you in an easy-to-understand and (hopefully) entertaining manner. This month I'd like to step on my tech soap box and share with you a few of my opinions and observations about websites instead.

Well, maybe they're not so much opinions as they are rants. But they are constructive rants - promise!

Don't strain my eyes

My eyes are so bad. How bad are they? They're so bad I wear glasses in addition to my (very strong) contacts when working on the computer. After eight-plus hours a day of staring, squinting, and straining to look at a computer screen, it's not uncommon for me to have a pounding, eyestrain-induced headache. Of course, a computer-geek with bad eyes isn't exactly unusual. Many, if not most, of the people building websites also have bad eyes, so you'd think they'd make them easy on the eyes. Not so. Websites that are hard to read seem to be more commonplace than ever these days - apparently in the name of being cool at the expense of being useful. But even folks with 20/20 vision (life just isn't fair!) don't appreciate websites that are hard to read.

Squint-print

The use of print that's so small you have to squint to read it has been in vogue for a couple of years now, both in the print-based marketing world, as well as websites. A marketing friend of mine refers to this as "squint-print." One advantage that websites have over print media is that web browsers can change the size of the text displayed by a website (in Internet Explorer, do this by clicking on the "View" menu, then "Text Size"). So, even though the web designer originally intended for you to look at a tiny font, you can use a larger font instead. Well, you used to be able to do that. Nowadays, more and more websites use techniques that defeat the ability of the web browser to change the text's size.

Low-contrast text

The newest fad in poor readability is low-contrast text. This is the practice of using slightly different shades of the same color for both the text and its background. Yes, it's pretty; just not very readable.

Then there are the websites that combine squint-print and low-contrast text to achieve the ultimate in coolness and visual appearance. Unfortunately, they also achieve the ultimate in unreadability.

I don't "scrub" sites

Warning: I'm about to truly enter the geek-zone here! After sitting at my computer for hours on end, day after day, using programs that require extensive mousing, my right shoulder really tightens up. And not just a little bit. Massage therapists are consistently impressed by the size of the knot that develops in my shoulder as a result.

Point being, when I'm hunched over my computer desk I don't run my mouse over anything and everything that's on the screen. I only move my mouse to the things I actually need to click on. Unfortunately, many modern websites require a good "scrubbing" with the mouse before you know how to use them. Scrubbing is the practice of moving your mouse cursor back and forth over an entire web page in order to discover which parts contain hyperlinks (links that you click on to go to other locations), and where those hyperlinks go. Call me crazy, but I like sites that I can just glance at to figure all of that out.

Underlines (should) = hyperlinks

In the early days of the Internet, nearly anything that was a hyperlink was underlined. Life was easy. If you saw underlined text, you knew it was a hyperlink. If text wasn't underlined, then it wasn't a hyperlink. End of story.

The new trend is to make hyperlinked text look like regular text. Yes, that does improve readability slightly, but at a cost to usability. With these sites, you have to mouse over all text that you suspect might be a hyperlink. Only after you hover your mouse over it does the hyperlinked text change somehow (e.g. becoming bold or underlined) to indicate that it's clickable.

Mystery Meat Navigation

On his website WebPagesThatSuck.com, web design guru Vincent Flanders uses the term "Mystery Meat Navigation" to describe the use of obtuse, non-descriptive graphics for navigation. There's a double whammy here: not only does the graphic not represent what its hyperlink does, but there also isn't any text accompanying the graphic. It's only after you hover your mouse over the graphic that it changes to something helpful, such as displaying the text "Our Services" or "Contact Us" to let you know what it does. As a result, you have to mouse over each and every graphic in the navigation menu to learn what it does. For a highly informative – and entertaining – read, go to his website and read his the Mystery Meat Navigation article.

Make it easy or I'm gone!

If a company wants me to use its website, it needs to be easy to read and use. If I can't read the text and understand how to use the site after a few seconds, then I'll bail out of it and go to one of its competitors. And I know that I'm not the only one. There's a slew of third-party, empirical evidence that backs up my personal, anecdotally-based opinions. To see some of that evidence for yourself, browse to ZolMedia.com/WebTutor/UsabilityRef.htm.